British MPs ‘slam’ Buhari during a public debate in London

British MPs took part in a debate yesterday scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee on the missing Chibok schoolgirls in Nigeria.

A background briefing paper for MPs before the debate stated: “In April 2014, 276 school girls were abducted from a secondary school in the town of Chibok, north-eastern Nigeria, by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram.Their kidnapping led to the creation of a large global social media campaign, #BringBackOurGirls. The campaign’s leaders were highly critical of the former president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, who was in charge when the girls were originally abducted, and they have become increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of his successor, Muhammadu Buhari since he took office 15 months ago.

“The bulk of the girls are still missing. On 14 August 2016 Boko Haram released a video showing about 50 of the girls. It featured a demand for the release of imprisoned militants in exchange for them. The group also claimed that some of the girls had been killed or injured in government air strikes. Boko Haram has kidnapped hundreds of other women and girls since the beginning of 2014”.

The debate was opened by Stephen Twigg, Labour MP for Liverpool, West Derby, and Helen Grant, Conservative MP for Maidstone and The Weald, both are members of the International Development Committee and had visited Nigeria earlier this year. They both wore badges from the Bring Back Our Girls campaign.

Twigg spoke about 9,000 West African regional troops fighting Boko Haram and the UK support in terms of military advice from 130 personnel, including hostage advisers and £5m in funding. He reminded President Muhammadu Buhari ofhis inaugural speech in which he said that Boko Haram wouldn’t have been regarded as defeated until the Chibok girls were freed. The president would like to forget this statement, especially as he declared last year that the militants had been “technically defeated”.

Some Chibok Girls

Watch the debate here.

Helen Grant spoke emotionally of meeting the Bring Back Our Girls campaigners at the Unity Fountain in Abuja. Another MP and member of the International Development Committee, Lisa Cameron of the Scottish National Party representing East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, described how during their visit to Nigeria they were accompanied by armed security, and this showed how “risky” it was for British citizens in Nigeria. She also said that they visited Kano and observed that girls in schools had a different curriculum to boys. In her opinion, “equality was not high on the agenda” in Nigeria. She also suggested that the rise of Boko Haram was linked to the economic situation in the country.